Leap Motion shoves release of gesture control tech to late July

Gesture control is a few months way

Update: Leap Motion announced April 25 that it needs more time to beta test its technology and will thus extend the release date for the gesture control device from May 13 to July 22.

Pre-order shipments will start to go out then, as reported by The Verge, though more testing will kick off in June.

The testing will be to improve the device's software and isn't supposed to affect the 600,000 Leap Motion units that have already been produced. Arrangements with HP and Asus are still good to go, too.

"This is the first and only delay there will be," CEO Michael Buckwald said. "The July 22 ship date is very hard at this point."

Original article...

Wave a friendly hello to the Leap Motion controller, which will finally get the chance to bound into North American arms soon.

Leap Motion started taking pre-orders for its motion control camera earlier this year, and confirmed today that the controller will start shipping to pre-order customers May 13.

While the camera can be ordered through Leap Motion's website, Best Buy also has an exclusive retail deal for the Leap Motion controller, and will begin carrying it in stores a little later starting May 19.

With an official release date comes a slight price increase, with pre-orders now listed for $79.99 instead of the $69.99 price that was previously announced.

The flick of a wrist

The Leap Motion controller plugs into either a Mac or PC via USB and is equipped with a camera that can track a user's hands and 10 individual fingers in 3D space.

It tracks hand gestures with an accuracy of 1/100 millimeter to the user's movements by snapping at 290 frames per second.

Leap Motion claims its controller is 200 times more accurate than other motion control cameras on the market, such as Microsoft's bulkier Kinect sensor.

A range of software will support the Leap Motion controller at launch, including Autodesk's 3D design software, Corel's Painter apps, and an optimized version of the popular game, Cut the Rope.

The camera-based controller can also be put to use for music creation, and will support a new experimental music game from Double Fine called <em>Dischord</em>.

The Leap Motion controller will support Windows 7 and Windows 8 along with Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8, bringing gesture control to all manner of computers. Well, unless you're a Linux fan.